The Rat Fan Club
Book Reviews:
Fiction
by Debbie
“The Rat Lady”
Book Review: Rattie The Hawaiian Rat
Finds a New Home
This
self-published book by Faith Fay is a charming tale of how Rattie
was rescued from under a car and placed in a new home with Faith. A large
format book measuring 8 ½ X 11 inches, almost every page has a large
photograph of Rattie on her adventure, along with a
few other pictures of some other animals, and
Book Review: Gregor the Overlander
This
book by Suzanne Collins (2003 Scholastic Press) is a fantasy story for
middle-school kids, but I enjoyed it. The only bad thing is that, as in a lot
of books, the giant rats are the evil enemies. However, one rat is enlightened
and helps 11-year-old Gregor and his 2-year-old
sister Boots, with their quest to rescue their father from an underground world
where humans ride on giant bats and make friends with giant cockroaches. The
story starts out a little slow, and then gets better and better, with hope at
the end that in the future, things might work out better with the rats.
Book Review: Firmin
This
short novel written by Sam Savage was first published in 2006, but the edition
I read was published in 2009 by Bantam Dell and included drawings by Fernando Krahn. It is written in a literary style, which I have
never liked. To me books like this just seem to wander around and don’t
go anywhere. I guess their purpose is to let the main character say whatever he
wants to. It makes sense to me that Sam Savage has a degree in philosophy.
This
book is supposedly written by Firmin, a small
strangely shaped, peculiar rat who can read, watches movies in a run-down
theater, wishes he was Fred Astaire
and lusts after human women. He is a morose character who considers himself
ugly, dislikes other rats, and lives by himself above a bookstore. He is really
not much like a rat, but seems to be only a character created to comment on
human life. The story takes place in a run-down area of
There
are a few statements in the book that are wrong in regards real rats. Firmin says he can’t laugh, but scientific studies
show rats make ultrasonic chirps in the same circumstances that humans laugh,
for instance, when playing and being tickled, which some scientists and all rat
lovers believe is actual laughter. Firmin says the
other rats tended to avoid the theater he liked because of a voracious
population of fleas and lice. However, while fleas will bite both humans and
rats, human lice won’t bite rats, and vice versa. Worst of all, Firmin tries to learn sign
language to communicate with humans, but complains that sign language was
intended “for creatures equipped with fingers” and he found it
impossible because he has paws. Now come on, rats do have fingers! No thumbs,
but definitely fingers. And how can Firmin play
the piano but can’t manage sign language? Finally, this is probably
nit-picking, but a drawing showing Jerry selling his books out of a wagon shows
a wagon completely different to what Firmin carefully
described in the story.
Parts
of this story are vulgar and border on obscenity, so this book is definitely
not for children. If you like this kind of stream-of-conscious writing you
might like this book, but you won’t learn much about rats in it.
Book Review: Little
Rat Makes Music
This
book was written by Monika Bang-Campbell, illustrated by Molly Bang, and
published by Harcourt, Inc. in 2007. Although it is a children’s book,
recommended for ages
Book Review: The
Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley
Written
and illustrated by Colin Thompson and Amy Lissiat,
this 28-page picture book was published in the
Riley
is a wild rat (we learn this through the pictures, we are not told this
directly in the story, although the back cover of the book says, “Rats
live for quite a short time and for most of that time they are very, very
happy….”) and all the rats have pink ears, tails, and hands and
feet, but that’s because their whole body is pink too. So to me it looked
like a whole family of hairless rats living in the wild, which of course is not
very likely. In most of the pictures they are very cute. However, their noses
are black, and their muzzles are smeared with red, which made it look to me
like they were dipped in blood. The picture where Riley is eating a slug is
rather ugly, not because of the slug, but because they gave him the mouth and
teeth of a shrew, not a rat.
Riley
is happy about everything in his life and the story contrasts Riley’s
happiness with how most people are dissatisfied with everything in their life
and always looking for something better or different. The style
of the illustrations are unique. I found a picture of a human baby
stuffing his mouth with a huge cheeseburger disgusting, but I’m sure that
was their intention.
The
creators of the book may have made Riley a rat because rats are so similar to
humans, yet they seem so simple. However, it seems to me that only the very
stupidest rat would be completely satisfied with his life, no matter what it is
like. Don’t your rats always want something more and something better? Most
of my rats would rather have avocado than broccoli, and they always want more
time out of their cage to play. However, the main point of the book is of
course correct: that everyone would be a lot happier if they were more
satisfied with what they already have. This book is really not meant for rat
lovers, but most of the drawings of the rats are endearing…especially the
one showing a huge pile of sleeping pink babies.
Book Review: Walter, The
Story of a Rat
Walter, The Story of a Rat was written by Barbara Wersba
and illustrated by Donna Diamond. It has 60 pages and was published by
The
first sentence of the book tells us that Walter was a very old rat. In fact, he
was much older than most rats and he is also unusual because he can read. He
doesn’t know why either of these facts should be so. Walter has come to
live in the home of Amanda Pomeroy, an older woman who writes children’s
books. He starts reading the books in her library. He is very sad that most
humans hate rats or are scared of them. When he discovers Miss Pomeroy’s
books and begins to read them, he is shocked that all the characters in her
books are mice. He also discovers that other children’s books often
include mice, but not rats. “Why doesn’t anyone write about
rats?” he wonders.
Walter
decides to leave a note for Miss Pomeroy on her desk, and to his surprise and
delight, she writes him a note back. They begin a regular correspondence and gradually
form a friendship. One day Walter gets up the courage to ask her why she writes
about mice instead of rats. She tells Walter about some books that do include
rats. First is “the story of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ in
which all the rats, unfortunately, are led away to their doom.” Next is The Wind in the
Willows, and the Harry Potter books. She says that Oscar Wilde mentions a
rat in a fairy tale in his book The
Devoted Friend. And finally she recommends The Boy, the Rat, and the Butterfly, by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers. All these books actually exist!
It’s
obvious that both the author and illustrator are familiar with rats and some of
their behaviors. Walter takes his name from a book he found in the dump by Sir
Walter Scott. Walter felt that this author was obviously an important man
because his books were bound in leather. “Walter ate most of the leather,
but left the pages intact.” Once settled in Miss Pomeroy’s house,
Walter did most of his reading at night by candlelight, “though he had an
unfortunate tendency to nibble on the candles….”
However,
there are two statements in the book that I disagree with. At one point the
book says, “Rats are not good climbers,” because most rats are
quite good at climbing. And Walter says that he had always been kind and
considerate and can remember committing only one crime. “In a moment of
hunger and confusion he had eaten two of his offspring, but he had been only
eight months old at the time—a young, impetuous rat—and he had
never done it again.” It is unlikely in the extreme that any rat would
eat his own offspring because there are biological factors that prevent it. As
the main theme of this book seems to be to present rats in a positive light, I
can’t figure out why the author would have included this.
Most
of the illustrations are fairly realistic and captivating, although
Walter’s tail is often too long and thin. It also bothered me that
Walter’s eyes were drawn light-colored (the illustrations are in black
and white). In some pictures it makes it look like Walter has cataracts.
Maybe the artist thought it would be easier to give Walter personality or a
more human look that way.
Overlooking
the few flaws, this is a very enjoyable book with a touching story. It would be
a good addition to any rat lover’s library.
Book Review: Rats
Incredible, An Illustrated Dictionary of Rats
This humorous book was written and illustrated by Ryn Gargulinski, and published by
WeiserBooks in 2006. A note in the back of the book says the
author/artist was at one time president of the Northeast Rat & Mouse
Club’s
The
introduction to the book, titled inaugu-rat-ion,
consists of 5 jokes in the format of a myth with its supposedly corresponding
reality. Some of the realities are
true, and try to convince people rats really do make good pets, and some are
just silly. Here is one example:
“Myth: Rats have rabies.
Reality: Junkies have rabies.”
In
the rest of the book, pages 2 to 71, each pair of pages features a word
containing the syllable “rat” and its definition, along with an
illustration. My favorite was
“ado-rat-ion: extreme affection, like rats have for spaghetti
sauce.” I also liked “i-rat-e: extreme
anger shown when your rat bangs his empty water bottle you neglected to
fill.” The viewpoint this book takes will certainly give rat lovers some
chuckles. However, some of the humor is a little raw. The drawing to accompany
“rat hole” shows a rat with a hole through his middle, and one of
the jokes protests that rats don’t really eat small children…only
dead small children.
Book Review: Rosie’s
Birthday Rat
Published
in 1996 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., this is a delightful
book with scenes that will be familiar to any rat lover. The author, Linda Glaser, is a rat
lover, and currently had a rat named Sunny when she wrote the book. The
illustrator, Nancy Poydar, must be a rat lover too
since she has drawn
The
story begins when Rosie announces that the only gift she wants for her birthday
is a rat. Rosie’s mother strongly objects, and presents all sorts of
reasons why she doesn’t want a rat in the house. One of these reasons is
that the family already has a cat. But Rosie successfully counters all her
mother’s arguments, and gets her mother to agree.
They
go to a snake store, where Rosie’s teacher got a rat, and in choosing a rat, Rosie helps convince the clerk that rats make good
pets.
The
next morning Rosie is faced with a tragedy.
The
only thing that would have made this book better is if it had mentioned that
it’s good to have more than one rat. While it’s perfectly
reasonable that Rosie would ask for—and convince her mother to let her
have—just one rat, Rosie said, “We had a rat in my kindergarten. We
had a rat in my first grade. Now we
have a rat in my second grade.”
Rosie could have just as easily said, “We had two
rats....” But other than this
point, I highly recommend this charming story.
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott
This
classic mentions pet rats three times, although I wonder if they might actually
be tame wild rats since they live in a hole in the attic. At the beginning of
Chapter 3: “[The garret] was Jo’s favorite refuge; and here she
loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet
and the society of a pet rat who lived near by and didn’t mind her a
particle. As Meg appeared, Scrabble whisked into his hole.”
At
the beginning of Chapter 14: “For two or three hours the sun lay warmly
in the high window, showing Jo seated on the old sofa, writing busily with her
papers spread out upon a trunk before her, while Scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded
the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was
evidently very proud of his whiskers.” Two paragraphs later:
“Jo’s desk up here was on a tin kitchen which hung against the
wall. In it she kept her papers and a few books, safely shut away from
Scrabble, who, being likewise of a literary turn, was fond of making a
circulating library of such books as were left in his way by eating the
leaves.”
Two
thirds through Chapter 23, when Jo is heartbroken that Meg accepts John’s
courting: “The little girls, however, considered it a most agreeable and
interesting event, and Jo got little comfort from
them; so she went up to her refuge in the garret, and confided her troubles to
the rats.”
Here are some other books that have been recommended that
I haven’t had a chance to review yet.
Rat Heaven by Jeanne Willis, Macmillan Children’s Books, paperback, 2006
Books that feature rats that might not
be great for rat lovers.
Deltora Quest #3—City of the Rats by Emily Rodda, Scholastic, paperback
Rats by Pat Hutchins, illustrated by Laurence Hutchins, out of print
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